Home Assistant Backup and Restore: Complete Guide

What Does a Home Assistant Backup Actually Include?

A Home Assistant backup is a single compressed .tar file that includes:

• Configuration files — configuration.yaml, automations.yaml, scripts.yaml, scenes.yaml, etc.
• Add-on data — settings and data for installed add-ons (Mosquitto, ESPHome, etc.)
• Home Assistant Core data — integrations, user accounts, areas, entity registry
• Media files — if you have the media folder and choose to include it
• Database (optionally) — the home-assistant_v2.db history database
• SSL certificates

Backups created in Home Assistant OS (HAOS) and Home Assistant Supervised are full system snapshots. Container and Core installs have more limited backup scope — only the config directory.

How Do You Create a Manual Backup?

Via the UI (HAOS/Supervised)

1. Go to Settings → System → Backups
2. Click Create Backup (top right)
3. Choose Full backup or Partial backup
4. Optionally set a name and password (for encryption)
5. Click Create — takes 1–5 minutes depending on data size

Backups are stored in /backup/ on your Home Assistant OS device. You can download them directly from the Backups page by clicking the backup → three-dot menu → Download.

Partial vs Full Backups

• Full backup: Everything including all add-ons and their data. Safest. Larger file (often 500MB–3GB)
• Partial backup: Choose specific add-ons and/or Home Assistant config. Faster, smaller. Good for daily automated backups

Via the Developer Console

You can trigger a backup via the HA REST API — useful for scripting:

curl -X POST \
  http://homeassistant.local:8123/api/services/backup/create \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_LONG_LIVED_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json"

How Do You Automate Backups?

Manual backups are a single point of failure — set up automation so you don't forget.

Using Home Assistant's Built-in Scheduler

As of HA 2024.6+, you can configure automatic backups directly:

1. Go to Settings → System → Backups
2. Click the gear/settings icon
3. Enable Automatic backups
4. Set schedule (daily at 3 AM is recommended), retention count (keep last 3–7)

Using an Automation (Older Method)

alias: Daily Backup
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "03:00:00"
action:
  - service: backup.create
    data:
      name: "Daily_{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}"

Add this to your automations.yaml or create it in the Automations UI.

What Are the Best Off-Site Backup Options?

Local backups alone aren't enough — a house fire, flood, or SD card failure takes the backup with the system. Off-site backup is essential.

Option 1: Google Drive Backup Add-on (Free — Recommended)

The Home Assistant Google Drive Backup add-on (by sabeechen, installable via HACS or the Add-on Store) is the easiest off-site solution:

1. Install from Add-on Store: search "Google Drive Backup"
2. Open the add-on web UI and authenticate with your Google account
3. Configure: number of backups to keep locally and in Drive, schedule, partial vs full
4. The add-on creates backups on schedule and uploads to a dedicated Google Drive folder

It handles rotation automatically — delete old ones to stay within Google's free 15GB. A typical HA config backup (excluding history DB) is 50–200MB, so 15GB holds 75–300 backups. More than enough.

Option 2: Nabu Casa Cloud Backup ($6.50/month)

With a Home Assistant Cloud subscription, you get automatic encrypted cloud backup included. Configure under Settings → Home Assistant Cloud → Backups. Simple, secure, no Google account required.

Option 3: Samba + NAS

Install the Samba Backup add-on and configure a NAS share as the backup destination. Backups are copied to your NAS after creation. Combine with a cloud sync tool on your NAS (Synology Cloud Sync, etc.) for true off-site redundancy.

Option 4: Rclone

Advanced users can use the Rclone add-on to sync the /backup folder to any cloud provider (S3, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, etc.). B2 costs roughly $0.006/GB/month — hosting 5GB of backups costs ~$0.30/month.

How Do You Restore a Home Assistant Backup?

Restoring from an existing, working HA instance is simple. Restoring to a fresh install (e.g., new hardware) takes a few extra steps.

Restore on Existing Instance

1. Go to Settings → System → Backups
2. Find your backup and click it
3. Click Restore
4. Choose Full or Partial restore
5. Click Restore and confirm — HA will restart and apply the backup

Full restore takes 3–10 minutes. HA will be unavailable during this time.

Restore to Fresh Hardware (New Install)

1. Flash a fresh HAOS image to your new SD card/SSD using Balena Etcher or the Raspberry Pi Imager
2. Boot and complete the initial setup (skip onboarding if possible — click "Skip" on the welcome screen)
3. Go to Settings → System → Backups
4. Click the upload/import button (or drag and drop your .tar file)
5. Select your backup file and click Restore
6. HA will restore and restart — all your devices, automations, and settings return exactly as they were

How Do You Migrate Home Assistant to New Hardware?

Migrating from an aging Raspberry Pi 3 to a Pi 5 or a dedicated x86 mini-PC? The process is exactly the same as a fresh restore:

1. Create a fresh backup on the old hardware
2. Download the .tar file (Settings → Backups → three-dot menu → Download)
3. Flash HAOS to the new hardware
4. Restore the backup as described above

Zigbee/Z-Wave coordinators (USB sticks) need to be physically moved to the new hardware. The coordinator's device path may change — update your Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA settings if needed (/dev/ttyUSB0 may become /dev/ttyACM0).

Frequently Asked Questions

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